Attorney-General's Dept to get its records in order

The federal Attorney-General's Department (AGD) is to drop its TRIM-based records management system and move to one which integrates with the agency’s new Microsoft SharePoint environment.

The department ran TRIM as its records management system since 2003, which now accommodates more than five million electronic records. Some half million electronic records are expected to be added this year, while 230,000 paper files managed through TRIM. Some 1.5GB of documents are created and captured daily.

The new records management solution — which manages information across all the agency’s locations, business applications and networks — will also be integrated with the department’s new SharePoint 2010 environment.

The environment has been progressively set up during the past year and following a degree of success, will be expanded to all areas of the department through to 2012.

Already SharePoint supports a number of business applications at the department, including re-platforming the agency’s corporate intranet and internet sites and development of selected workflow applications.

It also provides the platform for a learning and demonstration environment, a ‘Virtual Showroom’ which allows staff to trial and experiment with SharePoint capabilities such as team sites, My Sites, a knowledgebase wiki, and blogs.

“AGD is moving progressively toward the minimisation and long-term elimination of paper files and documents in favour of fully managed electronic documents,” documents on the IT project read.

“AGD also wants a greater capacity to share information and to support collaboration, both internally and externally, through electronic channels.”

According to the documents, this approach would be consistent with both Gov 2.0 policy and the strategic direction of the department for information management.

“SharePoint 2010 has been selected by AGD as the systems platform for these changes,” the document reads.

“It is planned to eventually replace current shared and personal directories with SharePoint libraries and My Sites, and for SharePoint to become the primary user interface for document management functions.

“At the same time, the transition from paper files to electronic documents will be supported.”

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